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League One clubs are also on alert for a potential loan deal if he cannot immediately dislodge Ryan Shawcross, Danny Batth, Bruno Martins Indi, £2m new signing Liam Lindsay and Harry Souttar in the central defensive pecking order.

Jones said: “They were very understanding in terms of that. Nathan, we believe, is going to be a wonderful player – but to do that he has to be pushed now and so on.

“One way or another he will be playing first team football this year.

“We want him to because we need to accelerate his development because he’s a wonderful young player.

“When he came into the first team he was unfazed by anything he faced so now he needs testing.

“We felt that the best way to do that was to keep him in our environment.

“Ireland have been very understanding and we thank them for that. We want him to really push on and if he did go away, his pre-season would be pretty much done. He’d be playing catch-up, he might be in the under-23s, so we wouldn’t be able to evaluate him – and we have big, high hopes for him.”

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Clubs are also on standby about a swoop for Souttar, aged 20, who shone in the second half of last season with Fleetwood Town.

Fleetwood manager Joey Barton would like to take him back on loan while there have been reports of interest from Portsmouth.

Souttar’s form in the spring earned him a close season senior call-up to the Australia squad, qualifying through his mother, but he still returned to training on Wednesday in a bid to prove his readiness to Jones.

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